Saturday, March 10, 2012

Invaders Now! HC

I picked this one up from the library, and it’s odd, I like the Invaders, I like Christos Gage, but this series left me fairly cold. In fact, other than the excellent Torch trade, I haven’t loved any of the Invaders material that Dynamite put out over the last few months.

And really, I should have liked this a lot more. This story features Arnim Zola, Shuma Gorath, and zombies. I mean, those are three of my favorite things, right? But the whole time lost element of the story never totally works. I just don’t feel bad for Bucky Cap or Toro, not as much as I guess I should. It’s also hard to get riled up about the repercussions of a story we never heard about before now.

Gage does a nice job with Union Jack, giving the character a pretty great batting average. Has anyone actually read a bad story featuring the current Union Jack? I can’t think of one. Steve Rogers is fine, as is Toro, but Namor, Spitfire, and the Torch don’t get a ton to do. The Golden Age Vision is somewhat interesting, but I don’t know much of anything about the character.

Arnim Zola isn’t much of a mastermind, leaving the main scheming up to the Lovecraftian Shuma Gorath. Shuma doesn’t have any dialogue, so it’s up to Zola and a weird WWII survivor to give the Invaders someone to play off. The dramatics never fully coalesced for me.

Caio Reis is a new name for me, and his art is decent. It’s tough going up against those Alex Ross covers. Reis’ faces were a bit lumpy and sometimes the battle scenes were too sketchy.